Canadian Saints – Third Period

Background:

Eulalie Mélanie Durocher was the tenth of eleven children born into a well-to-do, devout Catholic farming family in Saint-Antoine-sur-Richelieu, in Quebec, Canada.

Due to her poor health, Eulalie’s education was a combination of boarding school and homeschooling. At sixteen, Eulalie attended a boarding school run by the sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame in Montreal in hopes of becoming a religious sister. Eulalie’s struggle with chronic illness ended that opportunity. After Eulalie returned home, her mother died, thrusting Eulalie into running the household at age nineteen. A year later, when her brother became a pastor fifteen miles south of the family home, he convinced his father and siblings to move in with him. For the next twelve years, Eulalie cared for her family while working as her brother’s secretary, serving the poor and sick, and organizing many parish activities, including the education of the young. Seeing the need for teaching sisters in poor and rural communities, she yearned again to enter religious life. With the need for teaching sisters a high priority, the bishop of Montreal decided to start his own congregation. After meeting Eulalie, he was convinced she would be an excellent candidate.

Eulalie and two other young women formed the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary in Quebec. On February 28, 1844, at age thirty-three, Eulalie became a novice, donned the habit, and took the name Sister Marie-Rose. She spent the next several months in formation and took her final vows on December 8, 1844. Sister Marie-Rose was appointed mother superior of the new religious order.

At Mother Marie-Rose’s death, in 1849, the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary numbered 30 teachers, seven novices, and seven postulants in four convents where they taught 448 students. In 1944, a century after its founding, there were 3,367 teaching sisters in 212 institutions around the world, serving 57,299 students.

Intercessory Prayer:

Blessed Marie-Rose Durocher, your heart longed to educate the young in the faith and to teach them the many life lessons they needed to become good and faithful Catholics. Though your initial hopes of joining religious life as a teenager did not come to be, God later used you for so much more. Please pray for me, that my heart will burn with a desire to serve God and make Him better known, and that every obstacle I face will not be the cause of discouragement, but of hope in God’s greater plan.

… Blessed Marie-Rose, pray for me. Jesus, I trust in You …

Background:

Blessed Emilie Tavernier Gavelin (+1851), born at the very beginning of the 19th century, and going to her eternal reward 51 years later.

Emilie married a 50 year-old bachelor, Jean-Baptiste Gamelin, at the age of 23, from which union three children were born, two dying in infancy, and the third soon after M. Gamelin’s untimely death four years later.

As a now 27 year old widow, with some financial means, Emilie devoted herself for the rest of her life to good works; after a novitiate under the bishop, she helped to found the Sister of Providence of Montreal, dedicated to social needs whatever they might be, not least, ahead of her time, the care of the elderly, who even back then Emilie found to be suffering from extreme and debilitating loneliness, as well as the insane (mental instability is also now a near-epidemic). But they also, amongst other tasks, taught and cared for the sick, and now work in nine countries across the world.

It was while caring for the victims during a cholera outbreak that Emilie died after a brief illness, her last words being ‘humility, simplicity, charity…above all, charity’

Intercessory Prayer:

O merciful Heart of Jesus who, in your infinite tenderness for suffering humanity, have filled the Blessed Emilie Gamelin with a tender compassion for human miseries, and have raised her for the accomplishment of the designs of your Providence on the community of which she became the foundress, deign to grant us the grace we solicit through her prayers that she may be glorified on earth and that, in imitating her virtues, we may glorify you in heaven.

Our Mother of Sorrows, whom the Blessed Emilie Gamelin so faithfully honoured and served on earth, glorify your servant.

Amen.

Imprimatur: No. 873, December 1964. Please inform of any favour obtained: Bureau of the Cause Émilie Tavernier-Gamelin 12055, Grenet Street, Montreal (Quebec) H4J 2J5 Canada

Saint Pope John Paul II, at the beatification Mass celebrated on September 11, 1984 in Montreal's Jarry Park offered these remarks about Mother Marie-Léonie Paradis in his homily.

Today, a new name has been added to the living book of the Saints and Blessed of the Church who have lived on Canadian soil for centuries: Sister Marie-Léonie Paradis. This local woman, humble among the humble, takes her place today among those whom God has raised to glory, and I am delighted that such a beatification is taking place for the first time in Canada, which was her homeland.

Born of simple, poor and virtuous parents, she quickly grasped the beauty of religious life and committed herself to it through her vows with the Marianist Sisters of Holy Cross. She never questioned this gift to God, even in the midst of the trials of community life in New York and Indiana.

And when she was appointed to serve at a college in Memramcook, Acadia, her life as a nun was so radiant that she spontaneously gathered around her young girls who also wanted to dedicate their lives to God. With them, and thanks to the understanding of Monseigneur LaRocque, Bishop of Sherbrooke, she founded the congregation of the Little Sisters of the Holy Family, still flourishing and so appreciated.

Without ever doubting her calling, she often asked: "Lord, show me your ways" to find out the concrete form of her service in the Church. She found and proposed to her spiritual daughters a particular commitment: the service of houses of education, the service of seminaries, of priests' houses. She was not afraid of the various forms of manual labour that are the lot of so many people today, and that were honoured in the Holy Family, in the very life of Jesus in Nazareth. It was there that she saw God's will for her life. It was in carrying out these tasks that she found God. With the sacrifices inherent in this work, but offered out of love, she experienced profound joy and peace. She knew she was joining the fundamental attitude of Christ, "who came not to be served but to serve."

She was deeply moved by the greatness of the Eucharist, and the greatness of the priesthood in the service of the Eucharist: this is one of the secrets of her spiritual motivation. (…)

This latest beatification of a Canadian nun reminds us that Canada has benefited abundantly from the contribution of numerous religious communities, in every sector of ecclesial and social life: contemplative prayer, education, assistance to the poor, hospital care, apostolates of every kind. This is a great grace. And if today, services can be diverse and evolve according to needs, the religious vocation remains a marvellous gift from God, an unparalleled witness, a prophetic charism essential to the Church, not only for the very appreciable services taken on by the Sisters, but first and foremost to signify the gratuity of love in a nuptial gift to Christ, in total consecration to His redemptive Work.

And I would like to ask all Christians gathered here this question: do the people of Canada still appreciate this grace? Do they help nuns to find and strengthen their vocations? And you, dear Sisters, do you appreciate the greatness of God's call and the radically evangelical lifestyle that corresponds to this gift?

Saint John Paul II

Background: St André Bessette (1845 – 1937) was born in a small town outside Quebec, Montreal. He was the ninth of thirteen children. At 9yrs, his father died in an accident and at 12, his mother died from TB. St André became a Lay Brother and remained in the same congregation for over 40yrs. His duties were primarily porter. He regularly visited the sick, blessing them with oil and seeking St Joseph’s intercession. St André became so well known for his miracles that following his death, more than a million people filed past his coffin. St André Bessette was canonised a Saint in 2010 by Pope Benedict. His Feast Day is 6th January, the day of his death, aged 91.

Intercessory Prayer:

Lord, you chose Brother André to spread devotion to Saint Joseph, and to dedicate his life to the poor and afflicted. Grant through his intercession the favour(s) that I now request…

[State your intentions…]

Grant me the grace to imitate his piety and charity, so that, with him, I may share the rewards promised to all who care for their neighbours out of love for you. I make this prayer in the name of Jesus the Lord. Amen.

… Saint Brother André Bessette, Pray For Us …